


Mine

by grapehyasynth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AU, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-28 17:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10141604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapehyasynth/pseuds/grapehyasynth
Summary: Free to look, she studies him, chewing anxiously on her thumbnail. She’d told him she didn’t want to date. She’d laid out the rules herself. It’s hard enough trusting someone as much as she trusts Fitz, as a friend. She knows that. She knows first-hand the consequences of trust.But in the months since they met, Fitz has colored her life in a way she’d long since deemed lost. He’s grumpy and confusing and particular but he’s also gentle and loyal and he makes her laugh and he makes her want to do crazy things like reapply to Oxford or write a novel or sail the world. She’ll never do any of them, but he makes her want to.AU. Based on "Mine" by Taylor Swift. For anon.





	

“With equations like that, you belong at a much more prestigious university.”

Jemma’s lips quirk of their own accord. She’s the only customer in the diner but this is the first time her waiter has spoken to her, despite refilling her mug six times. She props her chin on her palm and looks him over – he’s nothing like the football quarterbacks who populate this corn-choked town.

“If you can recognize them as being advanced, then you belong elsewhere, too.”

He gestures with the teakettle to the checkered apron tied over his jeans. “You can see I’m moving quickly towards my God-given destiny.”

“Work hard and you might make fry cook,” she teases, already ducking back to her textbook, hoping to filter him out before the conversation reaches the point where she’ll inevitably have to shut him down. Not that he’s not nice, and nice to look at.

He hesitates a moment by her booth. She expects to find him leering, but when she looks up questioningly he’s riveted on her notes, his tongue protruding slightly from one corner of his mouth as if he’s working the equations out.

He catches her watching him and blushes furiously. “Sorry, bad habit,” he mutters. Forgetting he’d just done so, he goes to refill her mug and sends it overflowing onto the tabletop. “Shit – sorry, I –“

“It’s alright,” she chuckles, throwing a couple paper napkins on top of the spill. “Occupational hazard for you, I’m sure.”

“Not a football fan?” he asks abruptly.

“What?”

“It’s – the homecoming game. That’s why—” He waves at the empty diner. “Friday nights are usually our big nights.”

“Oh, no, I find the sport rather idiotic,” she admits, crinkling her nose. Were it not for his clearly out-of-town accent, she’d feel treasonous for this confession. “And…well, they wouldn’t let me in.”

“Are you that nutter who tackled the mascot?” he gasps, looking torn between being impressed and rushing to call the police.

“No, though I’m flattered you think I’m capable of it. I’m not a student.” She has no reason to tell him this, in fact she works quite diligently to keep it quiet, but there’s something so endearingly _awkward_ about him, about the fact that he’s missed her signals trying to send him away but also hasn’t once hit on her. “Or a professor. I – don’t actually go here. I attend the community college downtown. Night school. I sneak into classes here for extra practice.”

“Isn’t that cheating?”

“I consider it extra credit,” she shrugs.

“Wow.” He half-turns away, shaking his head. “Didn’t know anyone loved homework that much.”

“It’s pretty much the only thing I can understand in life.”

He lets out a soft snort. “I can relate to that. I’m Fitz, by the way,” he informs her, tapping the little plastic badge pinned to his shirt. “Engineering.”

“Jemma,” she returns, tucking her pencil behind her ear so she can shake his hand. “Biochem. Or, well, really only biology at the moment, but I’m teaching myself chemistry so that one day— Anyway,” she cuts herself off abruptly, cheeks burning a bit. Best not to get carried away.

“Right. Nice to meet you, Jemma. I’ll, uh, let you get back to that.” He nods to her work and backs away til he hits the counter and spins behind it, the tips of his ears red.

They don’t talk the rest of the night, but sometimes their eyes meet across the diner and Jemma can’t help smiling.

 

 

“I’m not interested in dating.”

Fitz turns too quickly to look at Jemma, catches sight of the long drop beyond the railing, and snaps back around, shoving his hands in his armpits to warm them against the wind.

“Course not,” he lies. “Me neither. Never thought of it.”

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate you,” Jemma continues anxiously, “or think you dateable. You’re immensely dateable. And I hope this isn’t a leap in confidence, but you’ve quickly become my best friend, the first I’ve ever had, and I’d be loathe to ruin that with a risk that demonstrably has little chance of success. Can you understand that?”

No, he cannot. It is not the first time since that night in the diner that Jemma has mentioned being lonely, having no friends before him, and he cannot fathom how it is possible, any more than he can fathom why someone with her mind was not immediately snatched up by a top university. Loneliness is the proprietary domain of gangly, bumbling types like himself, not sweet, precocious, pretty people like Jemma.

But he understands the rest of it. He understands how quickly and dangerously their lives have wrapped up together and how painful it would be to have to separate them.

“Honestly, Jemma, don’t worry about it. You’re my best friend too.”

He tilts his head in time to catch her soft smile, eyes directed just to the left of his, that reserve that reveals itself now and again keeping her from making contact.

Then he sees the open air beyond her again and blanches.

“Why did you suggest we come up here if you’re terrified of heights, Fitz?” Jemma laughs, turning to lean her back against the tower’s railing so she can more easily converse with him.

“You said you’ve never been,” he reminds her through gritted teeth. “It’s a great view of the city. Just – not for me.”

“You are without a doubt the bravest man I’ve ever met,” Jemma says without a trace of irony. “You would do the most foolish, reckless things to help other people.”

He knows what is going unsaid. She thinks the same cannot be said for her. He disagrees: he hears her rattle off ideas for experiments, sees her dip her waffle fries in her milkshakes, knows she breaks rules all the time to advance her education. She has a thirst for newness and adventure, but something has taught her to resist that. Something has made her too careful.

 

_iii._

“Can you believe it?” Jemma sighs, for the sixth time in the last hour. “They did it. They really did it.”

They’re sprawled on adjacent couches in the common living area of Fitz’s dormitory, watching the post-event breakdown of the launch of the first manned mission to Mars. A steady stream of tipsy undergrads passes through en route to Saturday night house parties, but Fitz doesn’t even seem remotely tempted to join them.

“Can you imagine going, Fitz? Being one of the chosen? I mean, for me it’s entirely impractical and impossible, but – can you imagine?”

“Not impossible, Simmons,” he mumbles sleepily. He’s starting to drool on the throw pillow under his head, now that the adrenaline of the launch has passed.

Free to look, she studies him, chewing anxiously on her thumbnail. She’d _told_ him she didn’t want to date. She’d laid out the rules herself. It’s hard enough trusting someone as much as she trusts Fitz, as a friend. She knows that. She knows first-hand the consequences of trust.

But in the months since they met, Fitz has colored her life in a way she’d long since deemed lost. He’s grumpy and confusing and particular but he’s also gentle and loyal and he makes her laugh and he makes her want to do crazy things like reapply to Oxford or write a novel or sail the world. She’ll never do any of them, but he makes her want to.

And therein lies the danger. She’s spent most of her life constructing these restrictions, locking her floodgates and reinforcing her fences, and without even trying Fitz is knocking them down.

“You should go to Mars,” he slurs from the other side of the room. He might be talking in his sleep for all she can tell.

“What, and leave you here to fend for yourself?”

“I’m going too, silly.” He burrows his cheek into the pillow, his knees curling up towards his chest. “Just as soon as they develop a drug strong enough to keep me knocked out the whole time.

There is no way Fitz is ever going to Mars. Fitz _hates_ flying. He hates heights. He’s terrified of dying and can’t go a day without calling his mum. He detests the cold and the dark and the one time they’d gone to a science museum and tried freeze-dried ice cream he’d been so personally offended he wouldn’t talk to Jemma for three hours.

All this, and the second he thinks Jemma wants to go, he’s ready to go with her.

 

 

“Cheers,” Fitz grins, tapping his glass against Jemma’s. He watches as she sips the champagne, eyes fluttering shut, before turning to look out over the lake.

“It’s beautiful,” Jemma murmurs. She tucks one leg under herself and lets the other dangle over the edge of the dock, toes just above the still surface of the water.

“Come off it, you hate Iowa.”

“I do, but I don’t hate _this_ ,” she protests, spreading her palm towards the city lights and their shimmery reflections. “If I have to spend my 21st birthday in Iowa, this is the best way to spend it. _And_ in the best company.”

Fitz has to look away from her guileless gaze. There it is again, that pesky hope. She’d been very clear about keeping things platonic. He almost wishes he found her hideous, to make this easier. Not that she needs to be hideous for them to just be friends, but he’d found her lovely and weird first and beautiful after, so that every aspect of her physical beauty glows with the bits of her personality he likes the most (even some he pretends to not like), and it’s all a mess. Besides, even if she wanted to date him, he’s not sure he’s ready for that. Having a best friend is, after all, work enough.

“You never did tell me why you came to Iowa, of all places,” he says quickly, trying to cut off his own rambling mind.

In lieu of an answer, Jemma sighs a little and shivers.

“Are you cold? Of course you’re cold, it’s September, and the lake effect makes it feel—Here, take this.”

He doesn’t have a suit jacket, or a letterman jacket, or even just a faux leather jacket. But he shrugs off his cardigan and drapes it around her shoulders, careful not to touch her bare skin.

“Oh Fitz, you don’t have to – well, I admit, it is rather cozy,” Jemma laughs, tugging the sides together across her chest. “This is my favorite sweater of yours, you know?”

“I know,” he whispers.

She looks at him like she might happy-cry, the only crying he can tolerate from Jemma Simmons without feeling personally guilty, and then they are drawn together, inexorably, slowly, finding each other in the darkness only by the warmth of the other person.

The sweater slips to the wood of the dock as one of Jemma’s arms comes to rest over the back of his shoulders, the other supporting her as she leans into him.

“This isn’t dating, right?” she mumbles as they kiss.

“Definitely not dating,” Fitz agrees.

 

“This doesn’t mean anything, right?” Jemma frets, opening the drawer one more time, as if her cosmetics, extra underwear, and pajamas might’ve moved in the second since she’d checked.

“Not a thing,” Fitz concurs, wrapping around her from behind. It’s a gentle restraint, a tug away from the dresser. “It’s entirely practical to leave some of your things here for when you stay over.”

That should only mean ‘when we have sex’, but these days, more often than not, it doesn’t. Jemma will come over for pizza night. She’ll come over to watch the League. She’ll come to Fitz’s apartment after a stressful day at her part-time job and they’ll spend hours talking and fall asleep together with nothing more than comforting kisses. That should terrify her. And much of the time, it does. But the rest of the time? It’s…nice.

“Right. Practical. I can do practical.” Jemma exhales shakily and twists to face him, flattening her palms against his cheeks. “Thank you for setting bail even though I’m a flight risk.”

He snorts. “Come again?”

“I know it seems like I’ll bolt at any minute,” she explains, curling one finger to stroke down his cheekbone, “but it’s got nothing to do with you, I promise. I don’t want you to take my hesitation and my second-guessing and my reservations and turn them into something wrong with _you_.”

“Well, now that you mention it,” Fitz mumbles darkly, but when Jemma squawks he grins crookedly at her and tugs her closer. “It’s new to you, I get it. It’s new to me. We’ll figure it out.”

“Together?” Jemma ventures tentatively.

“Together. Now, do you want to go not-date rather vigorously on my new couch?”

 

Jemma is curled up on her side at the far edge of the bed. She could almost be watching the pigeons on the fire escape, but Fitz thinks she’s not looking so much as thinking with her eyes open.

He lets himself down gently on the mattress beside her. Technically, it’s still only _his_ apartment, so it’s only a twin bed, but they both fit somehow.

“I imagine you have a lot of questions,” Jemma murmurs without turning over.

“Questions? About the father you never mention except to say he’s a rat bastard but who suddenly showed up out of nowhere? Nope. No questions. Not a single one.”

She laughs wetly and wipes at her cheeks. “At least you’re only being sarcastically gracious this time. Sometimes I think you’re _too_ nice to me.”

“Not possible,” Fitz breathes, almost to himself.

Jemma reaches a hand behind her, which he takes as an invitation to come closer. He curls around her, wishes he could cocoon her completely and keep her safe and warm until she’s ready to emerge. Except, something less creepy.

Her heart is thrumming too quickly when she pulls his hand over her chest.

“He’s the reason for it all, you know,” she whispers. “Why I couldn’t go to the colleges that accepted me. Why I can’t hold down a job or a relationship or find satisfaction in anything.”

He knows better than to prod. He knows she’s divulging this against her every instinct, and the preciousness of that trust could be disturbed at his slightest stirring.

“He’s independently wealthy. Significantly wealthy. So all the schools I tried to go to told me I didn’t qualify for financial aid, since I’m still listed as his dependent. But I’ve been essentially financially independent since I was ten. He gambles, he buys fancy cars and crashes them the next day, he goes away for months to beach resorts.” She sniffles and rubs at her nose with her thumb, bringing Fitz’s hand with her. “Once, when we convinced him to check himself into rehab, he told me it was my fault, that he was like this. I was thirteen.”

“Christ, Jemma,” Fitz gasps, despite his best efforts to stay silent. “Well, that – that certainly explains… a lot.”

“And I think when it all started, being so – so _careful_ , with everything in my life, it was to keep from being like him, so I wouldn’t wreck anyone else. And to keep people like him from wrecking me. But then, I just… I didn’t know how else to live anymore.”

“Until me?” Fitz teases.

“Yes, you’re my manic pixie dream boy,” she sighs. Then she groans, and twists her face into the pillows. “God, Fitz, I’m so sorry you’re saddled with me. I’ll completely understand if you want to go—“

“Where else would I be?”

This genuinely startles her. She looks at him for the first time, craning over her shoulder, her cheeks scrubbed red from crying.

“What?”

“You think _I_ don’t have secrets?” he snorts. “Jemma, there are a million things I’m terrified to tell you, not because I think you’ll judge me, but because – because –“

“It’s hard,” Jemma supplies softly.

“Yeah. It’s a bloody nightmare. And I’ve got more trust issues than we’d be able to unpack with three full units of movers.”

“Okay, leave the stupid analogies to me,” Jemma chuckles.

“Point is, you’ve not got sole ownership in the messed-up childhood department. And you don’t have to talk about it, now or ever, but if you do want to… My girlfriend tells me I’m a good listener.”

“Your girlfriend?” Jemma breathes, wide-eyed.

“Sorry, that’s not – I know you don’t want to –“

She kisses him, and he thinks he understands.

 

 

_vii._

“Jemma, it’s okay—“

“It’s _not_ , Fitz, it’s _not okay!_ ” She doesn’t know how it came to this, how things spiraled from Fitz waiting up for her with home-made garlic bread and chocolate-covered strawberries, how they moved from sitting on the carpet by the coffee table to shouting in the front hallway. “I didn’t get _this_ job, I didn’t get the _last_ job, I won’t get the _next_ job—“

“We’ll figure it out—“

”How, Fitz?” she pleads. “You work _all the time_ just to make ends meet for us, I should be paying half the rent and half the groceries and half the utilities, in fact probably more than half the rent because I spend more time here than you do, but I just keep failing, and I can’t—“

“Jemma, don’t—“

“It’s happening,” she gasps, and the realization is like a punch to the stomach. She actually staggers backwards, gripping the doorframe. “It’s happening. I’m becoming him.”

“You’re nothing alike,” Fitz snaps. “He’s got everything in the world and blows it all to hell, you fight every day for an opportunity—“

“It doesn’t matter. I’m a tornado. I’m a tornado of disaster and you’ll see it someday, you’ll realize it too, and then—“ All of a sudden she’s drawn up short, her rambling cut off by the harsh truth she’s been avoiding since they kissed on that dock, and maybe before. “And then you’ll leave too. People always do.”

He’s clamoring for her to stay, he’s reaching for her, but she throws the door open and runs out, takes the stairs so quickly she almost falls, sprints out onto street still wet from a summer rain.

It’s 2:30AM and she’s crying in the middle of the street. This is what she gets for taking risks, for letting Fitz uncurl her carefully constructed shell.

Running footsteps slapping across the sidewalk announce Fitz has followed her.

“Jemma—“

“It’s okay, Fitz,” she whispers, turning to face him, smiling through her tears. “We both knew this was inevitable. Why do you think I resisted the idea of dating so fervently? You’re a good man, Fitz. The best, possibly. And someday you’ll realize that and be done with me.”

“Don’t try to make this all self-sacrificing,” Fitz grumbles. He is in her space before she can resist him, not making any attempt to touch her but hovering there before her, ducking to see her eyes. “Jemma. Please. I will _never_ leave you alone.”

She can’t help the shuddery gasp that escapes her at his words.

“You can decide you don’t love me,” he persists, his own voice shaking. “You can decide you don’t want to date me. Okay. It’ll hurt, I’ll eat a lot of ice cream and get drunk with Hunter until our accents are entirely unintelligible, but I wouldn’t _leave_ you. We were friends first, remember? Friends first, last, always.”

“You impossible man—“

“Just, please don’t break up with me because you think you’re not good for me.” He is crying now too, and she reaches up to catch his tears, and he gently grips her wrists in his hands. “You are the best thing that’s ever been mine.”

She has tried to run from these feelings, these conversations, because they make her vulnerable. But now, she thinks as she throws her arms around him to hug him to breathlessness before they kiss, kiss, kiss their way back up to the apartment, it is these feelings and conversations that will make her strong.

 


End file.
